Communications networks have evolved to provide a communication path for data as well as voice, escalating service demand. While these voice and data networks are highly reliable, service failures can occur. In some instances, the workforce to handle the service failures has declined, causing more repair work per capita for workforce employees. Previous solutions have added hardware and software maintenance features to the voice and data communication services to simplify determining the cause of a failure. Software has been developed that allows a technician to locate an operation failure in a circuit. However, frequently such software is not readily upgradeable. Alarm systems have also been used to notify personnel that the service has failed.
Though the above solutions have proved helpful, previous systems for customer maintenance have typically utilized at least partial manual operation, which has inhibited speedy repair of faulty communication systems. As networks have expanded and numbers of users have grown, a need has developed for a more efficient customer maintenance system that automatically troubleshoots communication problems and reduces the mean time to repair (MTTR) the communication dysfunction/nonfunction.